An English Girl's First Impressions of Burmah

The chief stared at me a great deal when I passed his window to re-enter my carriage, and shortly after the train was again set in motion he sent one of his wives to inspect me, possibly with a view to offering me a position among the number of his dusky spouses. She opened the door, and stared at me for some time, taking not the slightest notice of my requests that she would withdraw, until she had sufficiently examined me, when she retired as abruptly as she had appeared, and I lost no time in securing the door behind her.

Evidently her report was not satisfactory, for I have heard no more of the episode. Possibly, she reported that I looked bad tempered; I certainly felt so!

What a fascinating journey that was. During the first part of the route the country is less interesting, consisting merely of flat stretches of Paddy fields and low jungle scrub. But all this I passed through by night, when the soft moonlight lent a witching beauty to the scene.

There is something so inexplicably beautiful about night in the east, so comparatively cool, so clear, so quiet, and yet so full of mysterious sound,

"A little noiseless noise among the leaves,Born of the very sigh that silence heaves."

The cloudless heavens sparkle with a myriad stars, the moonlight seems brighter and more golden than elsewhere, and the noisy, weary, worn old earth hides away her tinsel shams and gaudiness, which the cruel sunlight so pitilessly exposes, and appears grander and nobler under night's kindly sway.

The scenery in Upper Burmah is exceedingly fine. The great rocky hills, each crowned with its pagoda, rise on all sides, stretching away into the distance till they become only blue shadows. Everywhere are groves of bananas and palm trees, forests of teak and bamboo, and vast tracks of jungle, attired in the gayest colours.

The pagodas, mostly in a half-ruined condition, are far more numerous here than in Lower Burmah, and raise their white and golden heads from every towering cleft of rock, and every mossy grove. As we neared Mandalay we passed many groups of half-ruined shrines, images and pagodas, covered with moss and creeper, deserted by the human beings who erected them, and visited now only by the birds and other jungle folk, who build their nests and make their homes in the shade of the once gorgeous buildings. They look very picturesque, rising above the tangled undergrowth that surrounds them, but pitifully lonely.

We stopped at a great number of stations en route. The platforms were always crowded with natives of every description, at all hours of the day and night, selling their wares, greeting their friends, or smoking contentedly, and viewing with complacency the busy scene.

The natives of India, with their fierce sullen faces, frightened me; the cunning Chinese, ever ready to drive a hard bargain, amused but did not attract me; but the merry, friendly little Burmese were a continual delight.

They swaggered up and down in their picturesque costumes, smoking their huge cheroots, the men regarding with self-satisfied and amused contempt the noisy chattering crowd of Madrassees and Chinese, the women coquetting in the most graceful and goodnatured way with everyone in turn. When they had paid their devoirs to the old chief, they would crowd round my carriage window offering their wares, taking either my consent or refusal to be a purchaser as the greatest joke, and laughing merrily at my vain attempts to understand them.

I fell in love with them on the spot, they are such jolly people and such thorough gentlefolk.

It was very interesting in the early morning to watch the signs of awakening life in the many Burmese villages through which we passed. To see the caravans of bullock carts or mules setting out on their journey to the neighbouring town, and the pretty little Burmese girls coquetting with their admirers as they carried water from the well, or chattering and whispering merrily together as they performed their toilet by the stream, decking their hair with flowers and ribbons, and donning their delicately coloured pink and green "tamehns."

Here we met a procession of yellow-robed "hpoongyis" and their followers, marching through the village with their begging bowls, to give the villagers an opportunity of performing the meritorious duty of feeding them. There a procession of men, women, and children walking sedately towards a pagoda, with offerings of fruit or flowers; to contemplate the image of the mighty Gaudama, to hear the reading of the Word, and to meditate upon the Holy Life. Now we passed a group of little hpoongyi pupils with their shaven crowns and yellow robes, sitting solemnly round their teacher in the open-sided kyaung. Anon we passed a jovial crew of merrymakers in their most brilliantly coloured costumes, jogging along gaily behind their ambling bullocks, to some Pwé or Pagoda Feast, which they are already enjoying in anticipation.

And the strange part of it all is that nowhere does one see sorrow, poverty, or suffering; outwardly at least, all is bright and happy. I suppose the Burman must have his troubles like other folk, but if so he hides them extremely well under a cheerful countenance. Surely in no other inhabited country could we travel so far without beholding some sign of misery.

I think the great charm of Burmah lies in the happiness and brightness of its people; their merriment is infectious, and they make others happy by the mere sight of their contentment.

We arrived at Mandalay about three o'clock in the afternoon. The last few hours of the journey were most unpleasantly hot, and I was very glad when we steamed into the station, and I saw my brother-in-law (who had descended from his "mountain heights" to meet me) waiting on the platform. The journey had been delightful in many ways, but after being twenty-two hours boxed up in a railway carriage with a chattering ayah, it was a great relief to reach one's destination at last.

When I arrived in Mandalay I was filled with an overwhelming gratitude towards Mr. Rudyard Kipling for his poem on the subject.

Rangoon, fascinating and interesting though it be, is yet chiefly an Anglo-Indian town, but Mandalay, though the Palace and Throne room have been converted into a club, though its Pagodas and shrines have been desecrated by the feet of the alien, and though its bazaar has become a warehouse for the sale of Birmingham and Manchester imitations, yet, spite of all, this former stronghold of the Kings of Burmah still retains its ancient charm.

When first I experienced the fascination of this wonderful town, my feelings were too deep for expression, and I suffered as a soda water bottle must suffer, until the removal of the cork brings relief. Suddenly there flashed into my mind three lines of Mr. Kipling's poem, and as I wandered amid "them spicy garlic smells, the sunshine and the palm trees and the tinkly temple bells," I relieved my feelings by repeating those wonderfully descriptive lines; I was once again happy, and I vowed an eternal gratitude to the author.

Before the end of my two days stay in Mandalay I began to look on him as my bitterest foe, and to regard the publication of that poem as a personal injury.

The Hotel in which we stayed was also occupied by a party of American "Globe Trotters." In all probability they were delightful people, as are most of their countrymen. They were immensely popular among the native hawkers, who swarmed upon the door steps and verandahs, and sold them Manchester silks and glass rubies at enormous prices. But we acquired a deeply rooted objection to them, springing from their desire to live up to their surroundings.

We should have forgiven them, had they confined themselves to eating Eastern fruits and curries, wearing flowing Burmese silken dressing gowns, and smattering their talk with Burmese and Hindustani words. But these things did not satisfy them. Evidently they believed that they could only satisfactorily demonstrate their complete association with their surroundings, by singing indefatigably, morning, noon, and night, that most un-Burmese song, "Mandalay."

They sang it hour after hour, during the whole of the two days we spent in the place.

In their bedrooms, and about the town they hummed and whistled it, during meals they quoted and recited it. At night, and when we took our afternoon siesta, they sang it boldly, accompanying one another on the cracked piano, and all joining in the chorus with a conscientious heartiness that did them credit.

We tossed sleepless on our couches, wearied to death of this endless refrain that echoed through the house: or, if in a pause between the verses we fell asleep for a few seconds, it was only to dream of a confused mixture of "Moulmein Pagodas," flying elephants, and fishes piling teak, till we were once again awakened by the uninteresting and eternally reiterated information that "the dawn comes up like thunder out of China 'cross the Bay."

The only relief we enjoyed, was that afforded by one member of the party who sang cheerfully: "On the Banks of Mandalay," thereby displaying a vagueness of detail regarding the geographical peculiarities of the place, which is so frequently (though no doubt wrongly) attributed to his nation.

And here I pause with the uncomfortable feeling that in writing my experiences of Burmah, I ought to make some attempt to describe this far-famed city of Mandalay, the wonders of its palaces, the richness of its pagodas, the brilliancy of its silk bazaar, and its other thousand charms.

But such a task is beyond me. Others may aspire to paint in glowing colours the fascinations of this royal town, and the beauty of the wonderful buildings; but in my modesty I refrain, for to my great regret I saw little of them. My stay in the town was too short, and I was too weary after my journey, to admit of much sight-seeing. Beyond a short drive through the delightful eastern streets, and a hurried glimpse of the Throne Room, I saw nothing of the place, and the only thing I clearly recollect is the Moat, which I admired immensely, mistaking it for the far-famed Irrawaddy!

Therefore I will pass by Mandalay with that silent awe which we always extend to the Unknown, and leave it to cleverer pens than mine to depict its charms. "I cannot sing of that I do not know," especially nowadays when so many people do know, and are quite ready to tell one so.

Chapter IV

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THE JOURNEY TO THE HILLS

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"Old as the chicken that Kitmûtgars bringMen at dâk bungalows, – old as the hills."(Rudyard Kipling.)The horse who never in that sortHad handled been before,What thing upon his back had gotDid wonder more and more. – "John Gilpin."—

We left Mandalay at half-past three in the morning, (our heavy baggage having preceded us in bullock carts the night before) and with our bedding and hand baggage packed with ourselves into a "ticca gharry," we started at that unearthly hour on our seventeen miles drive to the foot of the hills, where our ponies awaited us.

As we left the last lights of the town behind us, and drove out into the dreary looking country beyond, I was filled with a mixture of elation and alarm, but when my brother-in-law (I knew not whether seriously or in fun) remarked that he hoped we should meet no dacoits, the feeling of alarm predominated.

It would be an adventure, and I had come there purposely for adventure, but an adventure does not appear so fascinating in the dark at three o'clock in the morning, as it does at noonday. I was quite willing to have it postponed. However my companion seemed at home, and settled himself to sleep in his corner, so I endeavoured to do likewise.

But somehow sleep seemed impossible. The shaking and rattling of the uncomfortable "gharry," the strange shadows of the trees, and the dark waste of paddy fields stretching before and around us, faintly showing in the mysterious grey light of the dawn, all combined to prevent me from following my brother's example.

On and on we drove along that interminable road, cramped, weary, and impatient; I sat in silence with closed eyes, waiting longingly for the end of our journey, wondering what strange people inhabited this dreary tract of land, and dreaming of the possible adventures to be encountered in the wild country towards which we were travelling.

Suddenly the gharry stopped abruptly; there was a loud cry from the gharry wallah, a confused medley of Burmese voices, and I sprang up to find we were surrounded by a large body of evil looking men, armed with "dahs." We were "held up" by dacoits!

My brother started up, shouting eager threats and imprecations to the men, and sprang from the carriage. I caught a glimpse of him surrounded by natives, fighting fiercely with his back to the carriage door, while he shouted to me to hand him his revolver from the back seat of the gharry.

But ere I could do so, my attention was called to the matter of my own safety. Three natives had come round to my side of the gharry, the door was wrenched open, and a huge native flourishing a large "dah" rushed at me, evidently with the intention of procuring the revolver himself.

At that moment all feelings of fear left me, and I only felt furiously angry. Quickly I seized my large roll of bedding, and pulling it down before me received the blow in the folds; then when the knife was buried in the clothes, I crashed the revolver with all my force in the face of the dacoit, and he fell unconscious at my feet, leaving the "dah" in my possession.

The remaining natives rushed at me, and I had no time to lose. Pulling down my brother's bedding roll, I doubled my defence, and from behind it endeavoured to stab at the attacking natives with the captured "dah," dodging their blows behind my barricade. The door of the gharry was narrow, and they could only come at me one at a time.

After playing "bo peep" over my blankets for a little time, they retired, and I was just turning to assist my brother, when suddenly, they rushed my defence, one behind the other, pushed over my barricade with me under it, fell on the top themselves, and we all rolled a confused heap on the bottom of the gharry.

At that moment the man at the pony's head relaxed his hold on the bridle, and the animal, with a speed and energy unusual in Burmese ponies, escaped and galloped down the road, dragging behind it the battered gharry, on the floor of which I and the two natives were struggling.

Faster and faster went the pony, till we seemed to be flying through the air, the door hanging open, and we three fighting for life inside. I made haste to crawl under a seat, and again barricaded myself with my bedding roll, but it was quite clear to me that the struggle could not last much longer; I was at my wit's end, and my strength was nearly exhausted.

Then the natives climbed on to the seat opposite, and pulled and pushed my barricade, until at last I could hold it no longer. They dragged it away, and threw it from the gharry. My neck was seized between two slimy brown hands, I was pulled from my hiding place, a dark evil looking face peered gloatingly into mine, and then I suppose I lost consciousness, for I remember nothing more until – I awoke, and found we had arrived at the foot of the hills; not a dacoit had we encountered, and the whole affair had been only a dream.

I was disappointed: I feel I shall never be so heroic again, or have such another opportunity for the display of my bravery.

I cannot remember the name of the village at the foot of the hills where we found our ponies waiting, and I certainly could not spell it if I did. It consisted of a mere half a dozen native huts, set down by the road side, and looked a most deserted little place. While our ponies were saddled, and our baggage transferred from the gharry to the bullock cart in attendance, we walked round the village, very glad to stretch our legs after the cramped ride.

All the natives stared at us, as they went leisurely about their daily work; the girls in their brightly coloured, graceful dresses, going slowly to the well, carrying their empty kerosene oil cans, the almost universal water pots of the Burman; the men lounging about, smoking big cheroots, and evidently lost in deep meditation; and the old women sitting in their low bamboo huts, grinding paddy, cooking untempting looking mixtures, or presiding over the sale of various dried fruits and other articles, for in Burmah there is rarely a house where something is not sold.

On the whole, we on our part did not excite very much interest. It needs more than the advent of two strangers to rouse the contemplative Burman from his habitual state of dreaminess.

In one hut I saw a family sitting round their meal, laughing and chatting merrily, while a wee baby, clad in gorgeous silk attire (it looked like the mother's best dress) danced before them in the funniest and most dignified manner, encouraged and coached by an elder sister, aged about seven. They looked such a merry party that I quite longed to join them, for I was beginning to feel hungry, but I changed my mind on a nearer view of the breakfast, a terrible mixture of rice and curried vegetables, with what looked remarkably like decayed fish for a relish.

All this time, though outwardly calm and happy, I was inwardly suffering from ever increasing feelings of dread at the thought of the ordeal before me. As I have explained elsewhere, I have always had a terror of horses, and had not ridden for eleven years, not in fact since I was a child, and then I invariably fell off with or without any provocation. But here was I, with twenty-six miles of rough road between me and my destination, and no way of traversing that distance save on horseback. Knowing my peculiarities, my brother had begged the very quietest pony from the police lines at Mandalay, the animal bearing this reputation stood saddled before me, and I could think of no further excuse for longer delaying our start.

Accordingly, I advanced nervously towards the pony, who looked at me out of the corners of his eyes in an inexplicable manner, and after three unsuccessful attempts, and much unwonted embracing of my brother, I at last succeeded in mounting, and the reins (an unnecessary number of them it seemed to me) were thrust into my hands.

I announced myself quite comfortable and ready to start; may Heaven forgive the untruth! But evidently my steed was not prepared to depart. I "clucked" and shook the reins, and jumped up and down on the saddle in the most encouraging way, but the pony made no movement.

My brother, already mounted and off, shouted to me to "come on." It was all very well to shout in that airy fashion, I couldn't well "come on" without the pony, and the pony wouldn't.

At last he did begin to move, backwards!

This was a circumstance for which I was wholly unprepared. If a horse runs away, naturally, he is to be stopped by pulling the reins, but if he runs away backwards, there seems nothing to be done; whipping only encourages him to run faster. I tried to turn the pony round, so that if he persisted in continuing to walk backwards, we might at any rate progress in the right direction, but he preferred not to turn, and I did not wish to insist, lest he should become annoyed; to annoy him at the very outset of the journey I felt would be the height of imprudence.

The natives of the village gathered round, and with that wonderful capacity for innocent enjoyment for which the Burmese are noted, watched the performance with the deepest interest and delight, while I could do nothing but try to appear at ease, as though I really preferred to travel in that manner.

At last however, my brother would wait no longer, and shouting to the orderly and sais, he made them seize the bridle of my wilful pony, and drag us both forcibly from the village.

And so we started.

Oh! that ride – what a nightmare it was! The pony justified his reputation, and was certainly the most quiet animal imaginable. He preferred not to move at all, but when forced to do so, the pace was such that a snail could easily have given him fifty yards start in a hundred, and a beating, without any particular exertion. He did not walk, he crawled.

In vain did I encourage him in every language I knew, in vain did the sais and orderly ride behind beating him, or in front pulling him, our efforts were of no avail. Once or twice, under great persuasion, he broke into what faintly suggested a trot, for about two minutes, but speedily relapsed again into his former undignified crawl.

My brother at last lost patience and rode on ahead, leaving me to the tender mercies of the sais, who, no longer under the eye of his master, and seeing no reason to hurry, soon ceased his efforts, and we jogged on every minute more slowly, till I fell into a sleepy trance, dreaming that I should continue thus for ever, riding slowly along through the silent Burmese jungle, wrapped in its heavy noon-day sleep, till I too should sink under the spell of the sleep god, and become part of the silence around me.

But the scenery was glorious, and I had ample time to admire it. Our road wound up the side of a jungle clad hill, around and above us rose other hills covered with the gorgeous vari-coloured jungle trees and shrubs. Immediately below us lay a deep wooded ravine, shut in by the hills, and far away behind us stretched miles and miles of paddy fields and open country shrouded in a pale blue-grey mist. I cannot imagine grander scenery; what most nearly approach it are views in Saxon Switzerland, but the latter can be compared only as an engraving to a painting, the colour being lacking.

What most impressed me was the absolute silence, and the utter absence of any sign of human life. All round us lay miles and miles of unbroken jungle, inhabited only by birds and beasts; all nature seemed silent, mysterious, and void of human sympathies as in the first days of the world, before man came to conquer, and in conquering to destroy the charm. It is impossible quite to realise this awe-inspiring loneliness of the jungle

"Where things that own not man's dominion dwell.""And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been."

We halted for breakfast at a small wayside village, where we found the usual mat "dâk" bungalow, guarded by the usual extortionate khansamah, and surrounded by the usual dismal compound full of chickens.

Here it was that I made my first acquaintance with the world renowned Burmese chicken, an acquaintance destined to become more and more close, until it blossomed into a deep and never to be forgotten hatred.

The Burmese chicken, whose name is legion, is a thin haggard looking fowl, chiefly noted for his length of leg, and utter absence of superfluous flesh. He picks up a precarious living in the compounds of the houses to which he is attached, and leads a sad, anxious life, owing to the fact that he is generally recognised as the legitimate prey of any man or beast, who at any time of the day or night may be seized with a desire to "chivy."

Consequently he wears a harassed, expectant look, knowing that the end will overtake him suddenly and without warning. One hour he is happily fighting with his comrades over a handful of grain, within the next he has been killed, cooked, and eaten without pity, though frequently with after feelings of repentance on the part of the eater.

It is, doubtless, the kindly heart of the native cook that prevents him killing the bird more than half an hour before the remains are due at table; he does not wish to cut off a happy life sooner than is absolutely necessary. It is, doubtless too, the same gentle heart that induces him to single out for slaughter the most ancient of fowls, leaving the young and tender (if a Burmese chicken ever is tender) still to rejoice in their youth. If this be so, there is displayed a trait of native character deserving appreciation – which appreciation the result, however, fails as a rule to secure.

It is wonderful what a variety of disguises a Burmese chicken can take upon itself. The quick change artist is nowhere in comparison.

It appears successively as soup, joint, hash, rissoles, pie, patties and game. It is covered with rice, onions, and almonds, and raisins, and dubbed "pillau"; it is covered with cayenne pepper and called a savoury. It is roasted, boiled, baked, potted, and curried, and once I knew an enterprising housekeeper mix it with sardines and serve up a half truth in the shape of "fish cakes."

But under whatever name it may appear, in whatever form it be disguised, it may be invariably recognised by the utter absence of any flavour whatever.